Saturday, February 19, 2011

Learning from the LadyBird

Little Jo

For years I've read Brian Andreas books and StoryPeople Stories of the Day online, and his quirky stories and comments about life, off the wall stuff that makes me giggle or pause to think, things like:

Birthdays:

When people asked how old she was,

she would say 1009365, more or less,

because she was so glad to be alive

that she counted every day a birthday.

She had some disagreement from her knees

about the actual figures though. . .

StoryPeople is publishing a new book by Allison Strine, a collage painter who makes whimsical collages featuring The Bird Lady. Allison paints book pages which are then cut to shape her collage images and backgrounds. Here's a short video she made about her work.

When I see something like this I always stop to think about how I could use something from what I see or hear in my own work.

Although my work isn't so whimsical as Allison's there is a bit of it in the new Little Jo pieces and I'm thinking about how I might adapt the painted papers to dress Little Jo. I know she's tired of that same old gray dress you see her wearing every day. I know I am.

Let's see what happens.

I already paint book pages so I'm not stealing that idea from anyone else. and I've already thought about how I used to play with paper dolls, so Little Jo + painted book pages + paper dolls = a new wardrobe for Little Jo.

Thanks, Hanna. Don’t you love it when someone accomplishes a dream like her book and the connection with StoryPeople.Little Jo is fast becoming an obsession. I hope she gets into some mischief this weekend.

Art Tip: Removing acrylic from hands

Use ordinary hand sanitizer to quickly remove acrylic paint and medium from your hands. The alcohol in the sanitizer dissolves the acrylic. Wipe well with a paper towel and then wash with soap and water.

Art Tip: brush cleaning

As I work with acrylic medium for glue or with acrylic paints I stand my brushes in a bucket of water on my work table and give them a soap and water cleanup every day or so. But eventually my brushes get gunky and sometimes I forget to clean them. That's when I clean them with Murphy's Oil Soap. I keep an inch of MOS mixed 1:1 with water in a tall plastic tub (Feta from Costco) and put caked brushes in that solution overnight. By the next day the soap has softened the brush and with a bit of elbow grease I can get the brushes back to useable. This also works for brushes used with oil paint. I gave up using oils but wanted to save those good brushes and Murphy's Oil Soap came to the rescue. Get it at the grocery store.